Go back to July 2011 eNewsletter
Immediately following the 25th IAA meeting in Sarasota, the Advanced Osseointegrated Facial Implant Course with Craniofacial Prosthetic and Surgical Hands-On Training took place on March 26-28 in Tampa, FL. This was the first advanced implant course put on by our association.
There was much interest in this course and the seats filled up quickly. The course was a great success. The attendance in the room represented Physicians and Anaplastologists from 14 countries around the globe. It was truly an international event.
Many topics were covered during the three day event. Day one was a full day with lectures and one-on-one instruction from Dr. Anders Tjellström. With the generous help of Cochlear Americas, every participant had hands on training with the surgical instruments and components used for osseointegrated facial prosthetics, all done on real tissue from pig head specimens. Participants were able to check their implants with the Osstell implant stability meter.
There were live demonstrations of state-of-the-art surgical planning techniques. Our friends at Materialise traveled all the way from Belgium to support us in this course with their demonstration of Surgicase® software. Peter Evans also offered a live demonstration of Freeform® surgical planning software using a haptic arm.
Several demonstrations of impression techniques were shown by Anne-Marie Riedinger, Dr. Kerstin Bergström and Jan de Cubber. Peter Evans demonstrated the designing and processing of magnetic superstructures and then offered a one-on-one experience for each participant to make their own.
Professor Mark Waters from Technovent gave an excellent lecture and demonstration on silicone chemistry with many samples for everyone to experience.
A live patient was present for the three days. Participants were able to watch as Dr. Kerstin Bergström and Anne-Marie Riedinger each took separate approaches to designing and creating an osseoinegrated magnetically retained nasal prosthesis for him from impressions to the final coloration and fitting.
All participants had hands-on training doing direct sculpting with high consistency silicone Jan de Cubber who was first to use HC silicones for aesthetic prostheses. Calendaring of silicones, intrinsic coloration and direct sculpting techniques were all demonstrated.
Along with all these fantastic hands-on workshops and demonstrations, there were lectures threaded throughout the program giving everyone a sense of the history of implant-retained facial prosthetics going back more than 32 years, case studies with examples of innovative problem solving, and lots of open discussion with everyone in the room.
The IAA would like to thank the generous support of our instructors: Dr. Anders Tjellström, Dr. Kerstin Bergström, Anne-Marie Riedinger, Jan de Cubber and Peter Evans for offering to share their years of experience in this unique course.
Cochlear Americas, Materialise, Technovent and Ostell were our incredible sponsors. The IAA owes these groups generous thanks as well.
The space for the course was donated by our friends at West Coast Brace and Limb. IAA member, David Robinson worked long hours to help with all the on-site logistics. Thank you David!
If you missed this opportunity, please stay connected with the IAA as we will continue to offer more educational opportunities in the future.
Jay McClennen
Vice President Elect
Advanced Implant Course Program Chair
